Vowing to defy the American public, Congress, the United Nations and international law by illegally attacking a fellow member state, Team Obama says "yes we can." After the UN Security Council refused to authorize a strike at member state Syria in past days, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power indicated that America "had given up" hope of a UN endorsement of its coming military attack, and would not seek UN approval if America bombs Syria over unconfirmed allegations it used chemical WMDs on August 21 outside Damascus.

By ignoring an ongoing UN weapons inspectors' investigation of US claims, Power recreated America's behavior in the run up to the Iraq War when the Bush administration dubbed the United Nations 'irrelevant' for not endorsing its illegal invasion in 2003. The Bush administration attacked Iraq anyway, ignoring the fact that UNSCOM inspectors had found no WMD threats in the country. The UN assessment later proved accurate.

I asked Martin Nesirky, spokesperson for UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon if the world was in for a repetition of spurious, politicized double standards to justify another regime change invasion as happened before the Iraq War in 2003? Do the standards only apply to Syria? Nesirky said the UN report would be scientifically and forensically safeguarded for accuracy and impartiality. He said, "This is a scientific investigation taking place involving experts in their respective fields, and involving- when it comes to the testing of the samples- laboratories that are specifically designated under the framework of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. And in addition, the provisions of the Secretary General's mechanism are very specific about how you guarantee the chain of custody."

Such accountability could be at the heart of US Ambassador Power's ire aimed at the UN when she spoke here recently. Even though she represents the only country to have used atomic bombs on another country, Power blamed the UN for its failure to discipline Syria during the course of its ongoing civil war. She said, "The system devised in 1945 precisely to deal with threats of this nature did not work as it was supposed to."

However, Power omitted a cornerstone of the UN system's 1945 mandate to prevent a repetition of the nuclear disaster in World War ll when the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And Power declined to address America's two-decade long poisoning of Iraq with next-generation nuclear WMDs begun during America's 1991 Desert Storm invasion using Depleted Uranium. The UN's IAEA amassed incontrovertible documentation of the devastation caused by DU. Some western experts say the birth defect rates in Iraq are 14 times higher than that of Japan after the WWll nuclear attack, with many defects so unprecedented that they still lack medical terms to describe them.

New Yorkers demand Hands off Syria in New York Times Square photo Rebecca Myles